The Marine Corps intends to purchase 1.8 million rounds of the Army’s new green bullet in addition to the millions of U.S. Special Operations Command cartridges already downrange as the service looks to find the best replacement for its Cold War-era ammo.

The new environmentally friendly M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round is on the way to U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, Army officials said, with about 1 million rounds arriving soon. The updated 5.56mm round is touted as more effective than old M855 ammunition and, in some cases, 7.62mm rounds currently in use.

The new M855A1 will be used by the Army to replace the Cold War-era M855 round, which was developed in the 1970s and approved as an official NATO round in 1980. In recent years, troops have widely criticized it, saying it is ineffective against barriers such as car windshields and often travels right through unarmored insurgents, with less-than-lethal effects.

The Army plans to buy about 200 million rounds of the new ammunition over the next 12 to 15 months, Army officials said late last month. The announcement came 11 months after the service had to halt the program when the M855A1 lead-free slug failed to perform under high temperatures.

The lead-free M855A1 is more dependable than the current M855 and delivers consistent performance at all distances, Army officials said. It performed better than the current-issue 7.62mm round against hardened steel targets in testing, penetrating æ-inch-thick steel at ranges approaching 400 meters, tripling the performance of the M855, Army officials said.

“For hardened steel, it is definitely better than the 7.62mm round,” said Chris Grassano, who runs the Army’s Project Manager Maneuver Ammunition Systems.

The Corps had planned to field the Army’s M855A1 until the program suffered a major setback in August 2009, when testing revealed that some of the bullets did not follow their trajectory or intended flight path. The bismuth-tin slug proved to be sensitive to heat, prompting Marine officials to choose the enhanced Special Operations Science and Technology round developed by U.S. Special Operations Command instead. Commonly known as SOST ammo, the bullet isn’t environmentally friendly, but it offered the Corps a better bullet after the Army’s M855A1 round failed.

Marine infantrymen began using it in Afghanistan this spring.

The Army has replaced the bismuth-tin slug in its new round with a copper one, solving the bullet’s problems, Army officials said. More than 500,000 rounds have been fired in testing.

With the improvements to the lead-free round, the Corps is again considering it as a long-term replacement for the old M855 bullet, said Capt. Geraldine Carey, a spokeswoman for Marine Corps Systems Command, based at Quantico, Va. The Corps already has bought 4.5 million cartridges of SOST ammo as “interim enhanced capability,” but also will receive 1.8 million rounds of the new Army bullet in July, she said. A decision to field the new M855A1 bullet will be based on how well it does in additional testing. Either way, the Corps plans to continue replacing the older M855 round.

The SOST bullet weighs 62 grains and has a lead core with a solid copper shank. It is considered a variation of Federal Cartridge Co.’s Federal Trophy Bonded Bear Claw round, which was developed for big-game hunting and is touted in a company news release for its ability to crush bone. It uses an open-tip match round design common with sniper ammunition, provides Marines deadlier ammunition with more stopping power, and stays on target through windshields and car doors better than conventional M855 ammo.

The new Army round also weighs 62 grains and has a 19-grain steel penetrator tip, 9 grains heavier than the tip on old M855 ammo. Seated behind the penetrator is a solid copper slug.

Unlike the old M855 round, the M855A1 is designed for use in the M4 carbine, which has a 14.5-inch barrel, compared with the M16’s 20-inch barrel. The propellant has been tailored to reduce the muzzle flash of the M4, but it also works in the M16A4 and other rifles chambered for 5.56mm ammunition.

The authors of the American Army’s Counterinsurgency field manual, FM 3-24, tell their readers that counterinsurgency is the “graduate level of war.”[1] Implicit in this bombast is that conventional war—wars such as World War II, the American Civil War, and the Russo-Japanese War—is the undergraduate level of war and therefore easier to conduct. American Army Colonel Robert Cassidy summed up the mindset of many counterinsurgency (COIN) experts when he stated, quite bluntly, that counterinsurgency warfare is “more difficult than operations against enemies who fight according to the conventional paradigm.”[2]

With Cassidy’s and FM 3-24’s logic, the World War I Battle of the Somme in 1916 was easy, as compared to COIN, despite the deaths of 7,000 British infantrymen who went over the top in the first hour of the attack, and the fact that as many as 20,000 British men had lost their lives by the end of the day. In other words, Somme was the undergraduate level of war. But Iraq in 2007, according to the logic of COIN experts, with General David Petraeus and the Surge, that was more difficult because it was counterinsurgency, or the graduate level of war.

The Pentagon has lifted its ban on women serving in the infantry, tanks and special operations, and the branches are examining all their physical standards in preparation for introducing women into these units in 2015.

Some military analysts fear the Pentagon will discard some standards to ensure that a significant number of women qualify.

“Perhaps it is time to take a hard look at what really makes a competent combat soldier and not rely on traditional notions of masculine brawn that celebrate strength over other qualities,” Col. Haring says in the current issue of Armed Forces Journal.

"“Perhaps it is time to take a hard look at what really makes a competent combat soldier and not rely on traditional notions of masculine brawn that celebrate strength over other qualities,” Col. Haring says in the current issue of Armed Forces Journal."

True. It is not like the days when weapons were swords, shields, pickaxes, long bows, or bayonets. How strong does one have to be to pull a trigger, or right click on a toggle switch that sends in a drone? I guess one could have a dispenser for tampons inside the tank alongside the gov. paid for BCP.

Speaking only as a lowly civilian, my understanding here is that we are talking about the standards for combat units. I've been put in full battle rattle on a couple of occasions and I'm thinking strength is a real fg important issue.

Anthony Principi: Wounded Vets Deserve BetterTerribly injured in war but forced to wait in line with those who just got old. That's not right.

By ANTHONY J. PRINCIPI

"To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan."

Abraham Lincoln's words light the path of America's eternal responsibility to those who have served in uniform. But we have lost our focus on Lincoln's command: Veterans and their families wait far too long for the benefits they have earned. Too often, this is because those who have been injured in military service—including our most recent vets—must wait in line with those who served but were not wounded.

On Aug. 22, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki said that the department has reduced a backlog of disability claims by 20% to some 773,000 cases, including about 480,000 that have been pending for more than 125 days. Yet no number of new claims processors will be skilled enough, no computer fast enough or shortcut quick enough to deal with the ever-rising tide of claims unless the VA refocuses on the kind of care the system was designed to deliver. The enumeration of benefits has evolved far beyond the nation's obligation to those who became ill or injured while in service. It is time to return to original principles.

Twelve years ago, America went to war. Since then, about 6,000 service members have been killed in action and some 50,000 wounded. Their claims for disability compensation are not choking the Veterans Affairs benefits system. They are the victims of the sclerosis now overwhelming the veterans-benefits program—a system that often puts the most needy in line behind everyone else.

Every year more than a million veterans file claims for "service-connected" disability compensation; that is, for any disability or disease arising while on active duty, regardless of how the disability or disease was incurred. Nearly 80% of those claims are from veterans whose service predates Sept. 11, 2001. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs website, 37% are filed by my fellow Vietnam War veterans. More than 100,000 claims were filed last year by veterans who served during peacetime.

The price for allowing veterans to file claims throughout their lives is paid by the veteran who has lost a leg to a land mine in Afghanistan; whose ability to think clearly was clouded by the explosion of an improvised explosive device in Iraq; or by the grieving widow of a newly deceased young corporal. Every claim for compensation must fend for itself in a bureaucracy for which every veteran is the first priority—which means, of course, that no veteran is the first priority.

When everyone applies for disability compensation, those who embody the reason that Veterans Affairs exists must lose out. Their claims are one more folder in an ever-higher pile. Restoring Lincoln's focus will require rethinking what VA benefits are intended to achieve. Benefits and services should respond to disabilities incurred by veterans while in service, especially disabilities incurred in combat or while training for combat.

This is not always the case today. One example: A Vietnam veteran need provide no evidence beyond a discharge showing in-country service and a diagnosis for diseases presumed to be the result of exposure to Agent Orange to get automatic service-connection. That presumption is based on tenuous medical science described by the Institute of Medicine as only "weak" or "suggestive."

Today, veterans who spent just one day in Vietnam are automatically service-connected for Type II diabetes (irrespective of other lifestyle or heredity factors); Parkinson's disease; prostate cancer; lung cancer (irrespective of smoking history) and ischemic heart disease. All of these are among the most common diseases of older men, veteran or non-veteran. Veterans Affairs examines veterans not just for the primary disease they may have, but also for conditions that may flow from it. Because these diseases get worse as veterans age, they have every incentive to regularly reopen their claims.

As a Vietnam veteran, I will be able to file a claim if I get sick at age 92, or 102. If any of those diseases contributes to my death, my widow will get the same compensation as the spouse of a service member killed in Afghanistan. My widow's claim will contribute to the pile of claims that must be processed along with the Afghanistan spouse's claim.

As the Republican chief counsel to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, and later as George W. Bush's secretary of Veterans Affairs, I was part of the process that created these presumptions. I make no apology for my actions. But our obligation to future veterans calls for refocusing the benefits we provide. Clear thinking can restore balance to the system while retaining its fairness.

Shouldn't there be a cutoff date—either in age or years since service in Vietnam—for disabilities that may be related to Agent Orange? At some point, the system now goes far beyond what the law requires—resolving reasonable doubt about the degree of disability in favor of the veteran, after careful consideration of all available data—as Veterans Affairs is required to do. This makes no sense when older veterans are compensated for the expected and ordinary effects of aging.

Another source of claims crowding the line for VA benefits is the concept of "individual unemployability." Veterans Affairs can pay disability compensation at a 100% rate to veterans with lesser disabilities—evaluated as little as 60% disabled—if their disability prevents them from working. That makes sense for working-age veterans. But does it make sense when a veteran files his first claim when he is 80 or 90 years old?

Veterans Affairs is compelled to devote the same resources to deciding these claims as it does to the claims of veterans just back from Afghanistan. And these older veterans receive 100% disability compensation—as retirees, in effect—while Afghanistan veterans with below-the-knee amputations get only 40% (the degree to which the VA believes such an impairment affects a veteran's ability to work). That's just wrong.

Some have called for Secretary Shinseki's resignation. I do not. Instead, Washington—from Congress to the Pentagon—must reassess what laws, regulations and rules can be changed to ensure that benefits and other decisions Veterans Affairs makes are beyond reproach and based on the best facts available.

Let's ensure that the department's limited resources are focused on its core mission rather than dispersed in an effort to remedy every possible problem for every veteran. Remember, when everyone is first priority, no one is.

An article that I wrote with Curt Bradley, which examined AUMFs throughout American history, provides a framework for understanding AUMFs. (And the Lawfare Wiki collects many historical AUMFs and declarations of war, here.) AUMFs can (as Bradley and I argued on pp. 2072 ff.) be broken down into five analytical components:

Conservative organizations are “hate groups” and Tea Party supporters are potentially dangerous extremists, according to educational materials the Obama administration is using to indoctrinate members of the nation’s armed forces.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request made by good-government group Judicial Watch, the Pentagon recently released 133 pages of lesson plans and PowerPoint slides provided by the Air Force from a January 2013 Defense Department diversity training center “student guide” entitled “Extremism.”

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton slammed the Department of Defense documents for what he described as their bias against conservatives.

“The Obama administration has a nasty habit of equating basic conservative values with terrorism. And now, in a document full of claptrap, its Defense Department suggests that the Founding Fathers, and many conservative Americans, would not be welcome in today’s military,” said Fitton.

And it is striking that some of the language in this new document echoes the IRS targeting language of conservative and Tea Party investigations. After reviewing this document, one can’t help but worry for the future and morale of our nation’s armed forces.

The DoD materials not only take aim at modern conservative groups but label America’s Founding Fathers as extremists who would be unfit to serve in today’s military.

The teaching guide advises that instead of “dressing in sheets,” radicals today “will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place.” American patriots who fought for Independence from the United Kingdom in the 1700s are identified as adhering to “extremist ideologies.”

“In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements,” the document states. “The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples.”

This language mirrors what the public is now being fed by the mainstream media. The term “neo-Confederate” is increasingly used by journalists and leftists as an epithet to smear anyone who doesn’t long for an all-powerful federal government unconstrained by the Constitution.

For example, MSNBC contributor Joy Reid said a few days ago that supporters of the Second Amendment draw their inspiration from the antebellum, slave-holding South. “There’s this sort of neo-Confederate thread that runs through this pro-gun movement and NRA movement,” she said in a discussion about gun control.

The DoD teaching guide treats Islamic terrorism as insignificant, ignoring, for example, the murder spree committed by self-described “soldier of Allah,” U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, at Fort Hood in 2009. The guide references Islamic extremism only in passing and doesn’t provide a precise definition for extremism. “[W]hile not all extremist groups are hate groups, all hate groups are extremist groups,” it states.

Curiously, at times the materials blather on almost incomprehensibly, using psychobabble to alert soldiers to the supposed perils posed by extremists.

The materials repeatedly refer to extremists as “haters,” an urban colloquialism that appears in hip hop music and in humorous graphic art posted on the Internet. The pseudoscientific materials also discuss the “seven stages that hate groups go through.”

It is as if the authors are winking at each other, acknowledging that what they’re writing is nonsense.

But the tone elsewhere in the teaching guide is deadly serious. It advises soldiers to rely on the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center as a resource in identifying hate groups.

A 2006 report from the SPLC claimed –improbably– that “large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the [U.S.] armed forces.”

The SPLC is a leftist attack machine funded by George Soros. After it labeled the conservative Family Research Council a “hate group,” a gay rights activist shot up FRC headquarters in Washington, D.C. in a terrorist attack in 2011. FRC president Tony Perkins blamed the “hate group” designation for the attack, saying the gunman “was given a license to shoot … by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has been at this game a long time, making money by sliming conservatives. It is so fabulously wealthy that it stashes cash in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, two of those tax haven countries the Left keeps complaining about. In addition to those foreign accounts, in its most recent publicly available tax return (for the year ended Oct. 31, 2012), the SPLC discloses gross receipts of $46.8 million that year and an absolutely astounding $256.5 million in net assets.

Many hardcore left-wingers don’t take the SPLC seriously. It was mocked by the far-left Nation magazine’s JoAnn Wypijewski who described its founder, Morris Dees, as a “millionaire huckster.”

The SPLC lumps all sorts of groups on America’s political Right together, labeling them enemies of the Republic. Conservative, libertarian, anti-tax, immigration reductionist and other groups are all viewed as legitimate targets for vilification. To the SPLC, you practice “hate” whenever you fail to genuflect with politically correct reverence before every human difference.

According to Mark Potok of the SPLC, even everyday symbols are secret amulets of hate. He describes the Gadsden flag, a yellow-colored flag that bears the phrase “Don’t tread on me” and features a coiled rattlesnake ready to strike placed above the phrase “Don’t tread on me,” is a symbol of hate that in “contemporary society [is] the flag of the militia movement.” The flag says “Don’t mess with us,” and implies, “Don’t mess with us at the point of a gun,” says Potok.

In fact the Gadsden flag, a favorite of Tea Party supporters, has been used by the U.S. Marines and Navy since 1775. In 2002 the secretary of the Navy ordered that a variation of it, the rattlesnake jack, be flown on all U.S. Navy ships for the duration of the Global War on Terror. The order has not been rescinded by the Obama administration. Perhaps Potok didn’t get the memo from his leftist friends in the White House.

Since taking office in 2009, the Obama administration has been on a relentless drive to stigmatize and delegitimize opposing points of view. The latest assault on American values comes from the same administration that instructed Department of Homeland Security officials to treat conservatives and libertarians as potential terrorists.

It’s also the same rogue regime that goes out of its way not to label actual Islamic terrorists as terrorists, that calls terrorist attacks “man-caused disasters,” and refers to the Global War on Terror as the “Overseas Contingency Operation.”

Americans ought to be concerned that the newly discovered Defense Department teaching guide attempts to spread the Obama administration’s venomous hatred of conservatives to heavily armed individuals charged with defending the nation from enemies both foreign and domestic.

Logged

"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Strategically, peacetime engagement around the world may not always prevent war, but it can give us better intelligence and local contacts if war breaks out. Training friendly militaries can make them more capable of helping us when and if the shooting starts — and those foreign forces want to work with and learn from us in the first place because they know that we’re very good at shooting.

Now it looks as if that argument is getting traction not only in the Army but in the civilian policy elite as well. “I’m not persuaded that understanding the human [factor] is going to make land forces more capable of preventing conflicts,” said Kori Schake, a senior official in George W. Bush’s National Security Council who’s now at the Hoover Institution, “but you guys actually have persuaded me that a better understanding of this will actually make our combat force more effective and more resilient.”

I’ve discussed so far a variety of differences between men and women that affect their relative aptitude for combat roles. Another distinction between men and women that has significant effects on military readiness is that only women can become pregnant.

Approximately ten percent of military women are pregnant at any one time. During the Gulf War, pregnancy was the leading cause of women’s being shipped back early to the United States. When the destroyer tender USS Acadia returned from an eight-month deployment during the Gulf War, thirty-six of the 360 women on board had been transferred off the ship because of pregnancy. The Acadia was the ship most prominently called “the Love Boat,” but it is just one of many that have had that label attached to them.

A comprehensive study for the Navy of female shipboard personnel found an overall pregnancy rate of 19 percent per year. The highest pregnancy rate (27 percent) was on submarine tenders, the class of ships with the largest percentage of women.

With the unprecedented use of female personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, one would think that the services would like to know what their losses are from pregnancy. According to a spokesman for Central Command, however, “We’re definitely not tracking it.” A Pentagon spokeswoman said that the Army does release information on how many women choose to leave the service because of pregnancy but not information on those who leave the war theater, implying that the information is tracked, simply not released. Only “general numbers” are released, she said, “to protect the rights of women, soldiers and the organization,” although it is not clear how anyone’s “rights” would be infringed by release of statistical information about pregnancy losses.

When it comes time to deploy, women fail to do so at three to four times the rate for men, the difference being largely due to pregnancy. Once a soldier is confirmed to be pregnant she becomes ‘non-deployable’ and will remain so for up to a year. After deployment, many women must be sent back home because of pregnancy. A Navy study found that a quarter of women (compared with a tenth of men) were lost from ships for unplanned reasons. Large numbers of military pregnancies that are carried to term are unplanned (over 60 percent of those among junior enlisted personnel).

Pregnancy in the later stages means total absence of the woman – who may or may not be replaced – but even in the earlier stages it results in substantial limitations on a woman’s ability to contribute to her unit. One Army MOS in which there are many women is “fueler.” Fuelers are responsible for fueling vehicles and are critical to their units. Unfortunately, however, female fuelers are medically restricted from working in that job because of chemical exposure from the date their pregnancy is diagnosed. As the Army was preparing for Operation Iraqi Freedom, it had to impose a cap on the number of deployed women who could be allocated to that MOS, and it had to move men from other specialties into the fueler job, creating shortages elsewhere.

Women cannot serve at sea after their twentieth week of pregnancy, and even before that they must be removed from ships unless they are within six hours of a facility “capable of evaluating and stabilizing obstetric emergencies.” After giving birth, mothers are excused from sea duty for a year.

Women’s ability to avoid deployment by becoming pregnant is a constant source of resentment among men. Intentionally injuring oneself to avoid deployment is a court-martial offense; intentionally becoming pregnant to avoid deployment brings no penalty at all, nor does becoming pregnant to avoid deployment, missing the deployment, and then aborting the pregnancy – a pattern that creates even intensified resentment. This latter phenomenon is almost certainly something that the military does not track, so it is hard to know how widespread it is, but while I was researching my book, several people (all Navy officers) spontaneously mentioned it to me.

Single parenthood is also a much greater problem among women than men. Although in raw numbers there are more single fathers than single mothers (because of the overwhelming disproportion of men in the military), the proportion of women who are single parents is much higher.

Comparison of the numbers of single mothers and fathers is meaningful only if “single parenthood” means the same thing for mothers and fathers, whereas it clearly does not. A Navy survey that inquired into the nature of custody arrangements found that 76 percent of single mothers had sole custody of the child, whereas only 16 percent of men did. While only 8 percent of single mothers had “joint custody (less than half the time),” 63 percent of fathers did. These are very different parental patterns, and they have substantially different effects on deployability – differences that are obscured by simply labeling the involved personnel “single parents.”

The military recognizes the incompatibility of single parenthood and military service. Army regulations, for example, bar single parents from enlisting, stating that “the Army’s mission and unit readiness are not consistent with being a sole parent.” The problem comes about when individuals already in the service become single parents. Single parents are required to file “Family Care Plans,” identifying someone who will be able to take over parental responsibilities in the event of deployment, but if that arrangement falls through — or if the requirement is not complied with — then there can be a significant problem.

During the Gulf War, a number of military women with young children were transferred back to the United States because of the stress of being away from their children. Because of the longer deployments involved in the current conflicts, one doubts that this is a lesser problem today. Reliable data are not available (and perhaps do not exist), however, as the military has an obviously strong interest in not widely advertising the possibility of the return home for parents who miss their children.My next post will be my last, and I will provide a few closing thoughts.

The Marines Need Funding for Today's Threats, Not a Pre-9/11 Worldhe Corps faces budget cuts even as its responsibilities expand in an age of cyber terror and embassy attacks.

By JAMES F. AMOS

In discussions in Washington about the sequester and defense strategy and resources, a basic question is often asked: "With the war in Iraq over and the war in Afghanistan winding down, why doesn't the U.S. military simply reset to its pre-Sept. 11, 2001, capabilities?" The underlying assumption behind this question is that we, as a nation, had funding mostly right then. I'm not sure I agree. In any event, what sense would it make to plan for future challenges and requirements by arbitrarily looking back to how things were done more than 12 years ago?

Consider what had happened to the Marine Corps by 2001. From 1990 to 2001, defense and security spending was cut by $100 billion on average each year. The focus on technology, and calls for cuts in manpower and procurement, assumed the U.S. would not need to commit ground troops to a major conflict for the foreseeable future. During that decade, the Defense Department reduced total active-duty strength by 32%. In 2001, the Corps totaled roughly 172,000 Marines, down from 197,000 in the 1990 Gulf War.

Even at that time, manning levels consistently fell below target and equipment readiness suffered. At one point in 2000, one-third of the Marine aviation fleet was grounded due to maintenance issues. While assigned missions were expanding and crises were multiplying—for instance, in relation to developments in Iraq and terrorist threats in the wider Middle East—Marine capabilities were stretched thin. Then came 9/11.

Over the past 12 years, fighting in some of the toughest corners of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Marine Corps has learned a lot about the force it went to war with—what worked and what did not. In many cases, our prewar focus on the "Three Block War"—which assumed that a modern Marine in the field might be called upon to fight, conduct peacekeeping operations and deliver humanitarian aid—was spot on (although we didn't have the money and facilities to train all Marines to that very high standard). Over time, though, we found that as the conflicts evolved, we needed some adjustments—and needed them quickly.

For instance, Marines found themselves short of critical capabilities in intelligence collection and analysis, in communication and in mobility on land, sea and in the air. Marines didn't have enough light attack and utility aviation helicopters, for example. They also didn't have all the training teams needed to advise and assist other countries in enhancing their own security.

Furthermore, Marine logistics structure was not well-designed for our new, more spread-out style of fighting, which required supplying many small, autonomous units distributed across a large area. Unforeseen long-term conflict ashore meant that the Corps had to add not only personnel, but more skills and equipment.

The new challenges of the 21st century also meant rooting out technologically savvy enemies who blended into the urban terrain and populace that sheltered them. Marines played their part in this effort by adding a Marine component to the U.S. Special Operations Command. This and other expanded demands led Congress in 2007 to authorize a Corps expansion to 202,000 personnel.

Yet demands for these hybrid war capabilities—requiring highly adaptable Marines, able to shift rapidly between, say, a close-quarters firefight and a humanitarian mission—has not removed the need for more traditional capabilities. The suggestion that in an era of sequestration Marines simply "go back to sea" ignores the fact that Marines never left the sea. While most of our deployed force fought ashore, where the demand was, Marines continued to deploy Marine Expeditionary Units on amphibious ships.

Despite the withdrawal from Iraq and the continuing drawdown in Afghanistan, the relatively new threat of cyber terror, and the traditional areas of embassy security and crisis response require uniquely skilled servicemen and women. Marines now provide a contribution to U.S. Cyber Command. They also provide increased support for embassy security, and currently provide a Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force in order to increase U.S. crisis response capabilities in North Africa.

While fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Corps—along with the Navy—continued to answer calls to respond to natural disasters and skirmishes in the rest of the world. Marines also provided training and assistance that underpinned America's commitment to build partnerships and stability within the broader security environment. In our post-9/11 world, more of our people must remain ready to deploy on short notice, which demands increased readiness levels compared with the force of 2001.

These and many other commitments mean that even if you eliminate the requirements of Iraq and Afghanistan, commitments and requirements in other areas have vastly expanded since 2001. Today, the Marine Corps has planned for significant budget and personnel reductions, even before U.S. forces are withdrawn from Afghanistan. Yet this doesn't mean the Marines will ignore the lessons learned from the past decade of combat operations.

The world is a different place than it was on Sept. 10, 2001—it's more dangerous. We continue to witness violent extremism, regional competition and increased sophistication and lethality among nonstate actors at unprecedented levels. As former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pointed out, since we cannot predict where and when we will respond to crises we have to plan for multiple scenarios.

The readiness and responsiveness of Marine Corps forces should not be anchored to a pre-2001 model of the Corps, because the world on which it was based no longer exists.

Every administration has its share of disputes with the Pentagon, but when it comes to where and how U.S. armed forces will be used, civil-military relations have not been this tense and precarious since the end of the Cold War. Military officers are increasingly willing to express their personal opinions about interventions, while civilian policymakers are increasingly willing to disregard professional military advice. Worse, a growing number of individuals from both "sides" seem unaware of the appropriate civilian and military roles and relationships, and their conflicts play out in public more prominently and immediately than ever before.

McRaven should look to ensure that US SOCOM gets off the path to conventionalization that is all about conventional rules, shiny boots, starched uniforms, online sensitivity training, and loss of cultural innovation. It’s ok to break the right rules every now and then but the wrong rules are being broken (failed drug tests, broken NDAs, and violent crime etc.). Unconventional warfare needs to remain the heart and soul of US Special Operations Command, and component commands. Small unit autonomy, breaking the right rules, cultural influence, and relationship building has always been the heart Special Operations. Something must be done to ensure these are not lost to the big machine of SOCOM.

Despite being in intense pain and mental duress, Josh remained alert and compassionate to the limited Rangers that were allowed to visit his bedside. Prior to Josh being moved to Germany for his eventual flight to America, we conducted a ceremony to award him with the Purple Heart for wounds received in action.

A simple ceremony, you can picture a room full of Rangers, leaders, doctors, and nurses surrounding his bedside while the Ranger Regimental Commander pinned the Purple Heart to his blanket. During the presentation the Commander publishes the official orders verbally and leaned over Josh to thank him for his sacrifice.

Oct. 23, 2013, marks the 30th anniversary of the Beirut Bombing. 241 American and 58 French service members were killed when two trucks filled with explosives crashed into the two barracks buildings. One of the 300 service members who lived in the building shares the story of the attack, his survival and how he lives with the memories.

The spread of advanced guided weapons, especially to non-state forces such as Hezbollah, has made the battlefield more dangerous than ever. Which is why RAND analyst David E. Johnson, who has written several papers on the future of armor, believes that tanks are more necessary than ever. “My sense is that ATGMs have made the battlefield — be it irregular, hybrid or high-end war — too deadly for anything but tanks and similarly armored vehicles. As an Israeli told me when I was doing research on Hard Fighting: Israel in Lebanon and Gaza, nothing else can survive on the battlefield.”

He has been out of the Army and unemployed since 2011. Last week, his hair way past regulation length, he put on his dress-blue captain’s uniform long enough for President Barack Obama to drape the Medal of Honor around his neck. He has a college degree. He has the Medal of Honor. But he doesn’t have a job.

What sorts of threats will the US military face in the “deep future"?That was the topic of a panel at the Association of the US Army (AUSA) conference this week, the heavily attended annual trade show that draws top Pentagon officials and defense contractors.It's a tricky proposition for the Pentagon, since making the wrong predictions means squandering scarce funds in a time of intense budget pressure. The Pentagon was forced to cancel the Future Combat System in 2009, for example, when the military tried to predict where the future was headed "more than a few years out," said Gen. Robert Cone, head of the US training and doctrine command. As a result, he told the panel, "We're a little gun-shy."Still, in a standing-room-only session, the discussion endeavored to come up with the most likely risks to the stability of the world – and most likely to challenge the US military – in 2030 and beyond. Here are their top three picks..

That was the topic of a panel at the Association of the US Army (AUSA) conference this week, the heavily attended annual trade show that draws top Pentagon officials and defense contractors.

It's a tricky proposition for the Pentagon, since making the wrong predictions means squandering scarce funds in a time of intense budget pressure. The Pentagon was forced to cancel the Future Combat System in 2009, for example, when the military tried to predict where the future was headed "more than a few years out," said Gen. Robert Cone, head of the US training and doctrine command. As a result, he told the panel, "We're a little gun-shy."

Still, in a standing-room-only session, the discussion endeavored to come up with the most likely risks to the stability of the world – and most likely to challenge the US military – in 2030 and beyond. Here are their top three picks.

1. The growth of cities – and of slums

By 2040, an estimated 65 percent of the world’s population will be in cities. That’s 6 billion people. While overall poverty will decline, an estimated one-third of those people – or 2 billion – will be living in a “slumlike situation,” says Kathleen Hicks, who was until August the Pentagon’s principal deputy undersecretary of Defense for policy.

This in turn will result in a “very high potential for lack of governance.”

With cities growing quickly, “You just don’t have the governance structures to keep up with that,” she adds, noting that services like sanitation and local trash collection could fall by the wayside and create grievances.

Such a “hyper-pressurized, compact environment” could fuel criminal organizations, much like the narco-gangs of Central America.

It could also create alternative means of governance, such as Hamas-like organizations, to meet the daily needs of the people.

2. A 'significant and lengthy' period of Sunni-Shiite violence in the Middle East

The big question in the years after 2020 is what the Arab world will resemble “after a good 20 years of shakeout,” Dr. Hicks says.

In the next decade, the Arab Awakening “will have effects in every part of that region.”

Iraq continues to experience violence, and demonstrations are rampant in Bahrain. It remains to be seen how longstanding regimes like the Saudi royals will weather the violence going on around them, and how they will adapt to the demands of the populace, she adds.

“I think you’ll see the beginnings of what will hopefully not be an incredibly violent – but it will be a tumultuous –10 years.”

Many of these countries, including Egypt, will be “shaking out what it means to be a democracy,” Hicks says.

The end result will be “a reshuffled, new Middle East,” she predicts.

For the US military, that will mean developing language skills and cultural expertise.

It may also mean trying to interest Gulf nations in growing their maritime capabilities, Hicks says – not traditionally a strength among countries of the region.

3. The revolution in personal communications, combined with cheap drones and robotics

There is an “incredible ability for people to network themselves,” enabled by an information revolution that “is so rapid that I think it’s even more frightening than we realize,” Hicks says.

The use of Twitter in the Middle East, for example, has illustrated “how powerful – often for the good – the technology is,” she adds. “What we don’t really know exactly yet is how it could be leveraged in ways that challenge us.”

Hicks recalls that she and her colleagues used to pass one another news stories about the different uses of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), from a proprietor delivering burritos to a man in San Francisco proposing to his fiancée.

While the uses were innocent, it got them thinking about the militarization of technology.

It’s possible to imagine urban environments where US troops are sent into battle against adversaries able to tweet the location of US soldiers they see, or use unmanned systems to broadcast movements. Another scenario: loading small, cheap drones with munitions to use against the troops.

“We’ve spent a tremendous amount of money developing [UAV] technology, and we’ve done it in a way to make sure it’s secure and that it can’t be easily corrupted,” Hicks says. But that could "put our forces at risk in a way we have assumed they wouldn’t be.”